Brands
McDonald’s warns its customers that ‘Big Mac’ is one of the worst passwords
NETHERLANDS: Forget fries with that. Your password could be just as easy to steal. On Change Your Password Day (February 1), McDonald’s Netherlands pulled no punches, revealing that ‘bigmac’ has appeared in 110,922 data breaches.
The fast-food chain leaned on “Have I Been Pwned” data to highlight a worrying habit. Consumers pick predictably weak passwords. It is not just pets, birthdays, or “123456.” Fans of familiar brands and favourite menu items are making hackers’ lives far too easy. ‘Frenchfries’ pops up 34,407 times, ‘happymeal’ 17,269 times, and ‘mcnuggets’ 2,219 times, with countless variations adding numbers or symbols.
Cybersecurity experts have long warned against lazy passwords. Yet the pattern persists, exposing the yawning gap between knowing better and actually doing better online. By turning its own brand ubiquity into a teaching moment, McDonald’s shows that cultural icons can succeed where generic campaigns fail.
The message is simple. If your password tastes like a menu, it is time to change it. Pick something unique, complex, and utterly un-McDonald’s. Hackers will not be laughing or ordering this time.
Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
